1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to clothes hangers and in particular to hangers used in women's clothing particularly in the fashion industry with the invention also being usable for men's clothing.
2. Prior Art
Women's clothing in the fashion industry has a wide variation of dress and coat designs from narrow shoulders to very wide shoulders. In order to avoid wrinkling or folds or deformities it is advantageous that the hangers can be adjusted.
Prior art patents that disclose adjustable clothes hangers include the following:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,905,877 issued to Gatling on Mar. 6, 1990, describes an adjustable hanger having a pair of opposed biasable arms having upper and lower segments and a pair of sleeves slidable about the arms when the arms are in a spring biased mode and being held in an affixed positions when the arms are in a spring biased mode. Each sleeve has a plurality of spaced stop receiving means for receiving an arm stop means when the arms are in a spring biased mode. Each of the stop receiving means for both arms is located in the bottom segments of the arms. Support blocks are mounted beneath and adjacent to the top segments to limit movement of the arms away from the centerline of the hanger.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,476,199 issued to Halverson et al. on Dec. 19, 1995, discloses an extendable clothes hanger with left and right side arms and left and right extension arms positioned above the left and right side arms. Left and right side arm gripping means removably and slidably couple the right and left extension arms to the left and right side arms so as to adjust the lateral extent of the hanger.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,179,174 issued to Kandl on Jan. 30, 2001, discloses an adjustable hanger comprising a V-shaped hanger with a hook portion and two angled shafts connected to the hook portion and a pair of V-shaped connectors and an engagement tube with the two angled shafts being slidably and frictionally engagable with the two angled shafts and the engagement tube. An alternate embodiment comprises a three-piece hanger that eliminates the separate engagement tube of the preferred embodiment.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,975,385 issued to See on Nov. 2, 1999, discloses an adjustable clothes hanger that includes a rotatable hook that operates a rack and pinion that extends and retracts in accordance with the rotation of the hook.